Where does spirituality end and science begin? CHRISTIAN JAILER writes that science is starting to provide evidence for some of our spiritual beliefs.

Quantum physics, also known as quantum mechanics, is a central theory in physics that examines the tiniest particles and energies revealed in nature. These comprise of atoms and subatomic particles such as electrons and photons.

If you gaze closer, atoms and other particles in their simple form are only made up of energy. And energy is in continuous motion. This is where traditional scientific principles often break down because moving energy can’t easily be measured and categorised as science aims to do. Instead, we’re left with a new world of potentials that start to explain nature on an unfathomable level, which has conventionally been the realm of spirituality.

In the physical world, we all seem like very separate individuals. If you could gaze at an atom under a powerful microscope, you would see a small, hurricane-like vortex that contained other infinitely small energy vortices called quarks and photons. These vortices are unseen to the human eye, and like all energy, they have no mass or physical structure.

Quantum physics has proven that our thoughts can indeed influence matter. Your mind has created your reality based on your thoughts and insights. Many modern theories support this observation.

Science previously believed that matter only contained particles, and light only existed in waves. Now, quantum physicists have found that light can act like a particle, twisting around corners or bouncing off walls. And matter can behave as a wave, such as electrons moving in waves around a neutron.

Simply observing particles actually changes their behaviour. Electrons have been shown to behave as waves. Although, an Israeli study revealed they only do this when no one is watching.

Electrons moving in waves. Photo: Alexandre Gondran [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia CommonsQuantum physics now provides a way to prove that time is not as absolute as we often think it is. Scientists have proven certain particles can become entangled so that their physical properties will consistently mirror each other.

Spiritual teachings reveal the karmic principle that what you put into the universe will come back to you. But quantum physics is revealing there may actually be a scientific law behind that mantra.

One particle can be in many locations at once. A fact that has been proven repeatedly in what physicians call the double-slit experiment. Researchers have sent atoms, photons, complex molecules and other single particles through a barrier that has two slits cut into it. Every time, each particle shows evidence of interacting with itself on the other side of the barrier. This shows the particle somehow went through both slits at the same time. This has given rise to the many-worlds theory, which suggests there’s endless number of parallel universes that exist in this moment. This also means there’s an infinite number of potential realities where the infinite versions of you have committed every action possible during your infinite lives.

The online world has caused a divide between human connections in the real world. In situations where we feel bored or have nothing to do our natural human instincts would be to talk to somebody either next to us or start up a conversation with a total stranger, to read a book or the newspaper or to simply sit and connect with … ourselves. Instead we are navigating straight towards our phones, as if it has become apart of our natural human instincts. Slowly we are losing connections with both ourselves and each other.

I began to notice this problem in society and then I noticed it within myself. Our phones allow us to ‘stay connected’ but also cut off connections in other parts of our lives. For instance when we catch public transport. Hundreds of people sit next to each other each day, a different stranger everyday. Out of how many people we sit next to each time we catch the train or bus, do we actually greet and have a conversation with. Instead we are most likely on our phones, and so are all the people around us. Although we may be talking to people through our phones and staying connected, we disregard and cut off our surroundings, creating a bubble around ourselves. Cutting off our connections to those people around us.

Society is beginning to adapt a new way of socialising, unintentionally. Instead of putting ourselves out there we are choosing to keep the online world as our barrier, our shield of protection from self doubt. What this barrier creates is a loss in real life human interaction which then in turn, losing touch with ourselves.

We can create a kind of alternate persona online, as it’s so easy to do. When we create a new profile online it asks us who we are. For some, we don’t actually completely know who we are or are not happy with who we are as a person. This online world gives us the opportunity to create someone we want to be or can’t be in reality. It creates a forefront. But what it can also do is cause us to become lost with who we truly are in reality. We make ourselves out to be this way online but then in reality we don’t know who we are but also don’t know how to be that person we perceive online. This causes more comfort living in the online world through a profile we created. But in the end we are never able to truly find who we are as a person. It has almost become a 3 dimensional world between reality, fantasy and online.

We need to put down the devices and give ourselves a small break to have a moment with both ourselves and with others. We need to enable ourselves with the ability to learn about ourselves. In a state of mind where we feel vulnerable is also the state where we are able to learn so much about ourselves, our hopes, our dreams, our fears.

We must remember to live in the moment and to be aware of our surroundings. There is so much love and beauty both in the world and the people in it. The more we teach ourselves to acknowledge the people around us, we will always be aware. We can teach ourselves to live in a world again where our natural human instinct is to say hello and ask someone how they are and genuinely mean it.

On Sorry Day and during Reconciliation Week Australians say sorry for the policies that led to the Stolen Generations.

For more than 100 years the government had an official policy of removing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. The majority of children were taken between 1869 and 1969, but some youths were taken before and after this time.

Sorry Day has been recognised on May 26 every year since 1998. while National Reconciliation week takes place between 27 May and June 3.

Two years after 1997’s Bringing Them Home report told harrowing stories of the anguish felt by people whose families had been torn apart, PM John Howard made the ‘Motion of Reconciliation’ to the Aboriginal people. Howard called the policy and its effects “the most blemished chapter” in Australian history.

It wasn’t until ten years later that then PM Kevin Rudd made the first official apology on February 13, 2008.

Reconciliation Week is based on five key dimensions: Race Relations, Equality and Equity, Institutional Integrity, Historical Acceptance and Unity.

Welcome to Country is an Indigenous tradition where tribes would ask permission from the hosting group to enter their land. Today the ceremony can take many various forms, such as singing, dancing, smoking, ceremonies or a speech.

At Sydney TAFE Media we acknowledge this land as belonging to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and we pay our respects to them.

Thank you for joining us for today’s program, ‘Connections’, in recognition of Sorry Day and Reconciliation Week 2018.

Today we acknowledge the ongoing anguish felt by families torn apart by government policies that created the Stolen Generations. We grieve that there is still so far to go before we close the gap. In ‘Connections’ we will consider connectedness with family, culture and identity through music, language and stories.

You can listen to us online between 11am and 12 noon by clicking the image (left).

We offer our respect, thanks and appreciation to the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the traditional owners of the land on which our college stands. Thank you also to our brothers and sisters at Eora TAFE who so generously shared their stories with us this week.